Ars Nova Workshop is pleased to present an evening of compositions by Derek Bailey and Paul Rutherford, night one of our British contemporary music celebration.

Presented in conjunction with the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the UK’s largest international festival of new and experimental music, Ars Nova Workshop’s two-day festival celebrates Britain’s extraordinary contributions to jazz and contemporary music. Night one brings together a remarkable ensemble of some of the finest creative musicians from the UK and Philadelphia to realize several incredible pieces by two of the music’s pioneers.

The program includes the US premiere of Bailey’s realization of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Plus-Minus,” which was composed while Stockhausen lived in Philadelphia; the US premiere of “Ping,” Bailey’s transliteration of the titular Samuel Beckett play, and a trio of solo guitar compositions; and the US premiere of a new version of Rutherford’s piece “Quasi-Mode” for 12 players.

Karlheinz Stockhausen; realized Derek Bailey | Plus-Minus The cryptic, hyper-complex yet somehow open-ended nature of Stockhausen’s ‘recipe’ score of 1963 – which was composed while Stockhausen lived in Philadelphia - has attracted many adventurous musicians, with several of them relishing the opportunity to use Stockhausen’s template to mould distinctively personal material of their own. Bailey’s interest in Stockhausen’s work at this time is evidenced by several entries in his notebooks, and this realisation must have seemed like an interesting way for Bailey to structure the very personal guitar language he was in the process of developing, without allowing his own aesthetic preferences to predominate. This performance is of one possible completion of Bailey’s unfinished realization.

Paul Rutherford | Quasi-Mode IIIThe third version of Quasi-Mode was prepared in 1980, for an appearance by The London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra on BBC Radio 3's Music In Our Time. A virtuoso trombonist and euphonium player, Rutherford had a life-long fascination with the permutation of modes and note sequences, and this piece is an excellent example of his exploration of such material. The original score is for 18 musicians; this new version (12 players) includes all the notated material, with slightly reduced instrumentation.

Derek Bailey | No. 22 [Ping]This substantial notated work sees Bailey adopting another externally-imposed structuring device in an attempt to disrupt the habitual or comfortable responses of both composer and performers (cf Plus-Minus). The structure is a transliteration of Samuel Beckett’s Ping; Beckett’s English version of the text was published in 1967, and it’s probable that Bailey started work on this setting shortly thereafter. With a through-composed nucleus of over 300 bars, the piece is a remarkably single-minded exploration of a systematic structural experiment, making no concessions to instrumental practicality - written for a trio of legendary improvisers: Evan Parker, Paul Rutherford and Bailey himself.

Guitarist/composer Derek Bailey (1930-2005) was one of the towering figures of the English avant-garde and a leading pioneer of free improvisation. In mid-1960s London, Bailey began working with fellow jazz experimentalists like Evan Parker, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland and John Stevens. He co-founded Incus, the first musician-owned independent record label in the UK, with Parker, Tony Oxley and Michael Walters. Bailey’s long-running Company Week festival convened a wide range of improvisers annually for nearly 20 years, including, at various times, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Kaiser, Steve Lacy, Fred Frith, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink and Buckethead.

About Paul Rutherford

Trombonist/composer Paul Rutherford (1940-2007) was playing in a Dixieland band when he met drummer John Stevens and saxophonist Trevor Watts in 1958, laying the foundation for European free improvisation through the trio’s experiments with American jazz. He was a member of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Barry Guy’s London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra, Globe Unity Orchestra and Keith Tippett’s Centipede during his long career, as well as playing occasional gigs with the likes of Soft Machine. He founded the group Iskra 1903, originally with Barry Guy and Derek Bailey though the line-up changed throughout the years.

Ars Nova Workshop is a Philadelphia nonprofit jazz and experimental music presenting organization. ANW informs, inspires, and challenges listeners to elevate the role of jazz, improvisation, and experimental music in contemporary culture. ANW events provide a forum for discourse, emergent trends in contemporary music, and unique forms of cultural exchange, while nurturing a diverse community for innovative music.